If Your Baby's Not Sleeping, Try Your iPhone's Hidden White Noise Feature

Babies can be difficult. They eat all the time, pee and poop wherever they want and they may not sleep at night, especially during sleep regressions. According to the American Academy of Pediatrics , playing sounds from a white noise machine can help soothe your baby and get them to settle down, giving you a moment of respite. And if you have an iPhone , you don't need to spend money on a white noise machine. When Apple released iOS 15 in 2021, the operating system brought a hidden feature called Background Sounds . It allows you to turn your iPhone into a white noise machine, and you can play these sounds by themselves or under a podcast, music or video streaming app. When Apple introduced Background Sounds, there were six ambient sounds to play on a loop: rain, stream and ocean waves, which are natural sounds, and bright, balanced and dark noise, which are different pitches of white noise . When the tech giant released iOS 18 in 2024, it added two sounds: night and fire. And iOS 26 brought even more background sounds to devices, including rain on roof and babble, which sounds like a busy cafe. If you want to use these sounds to lull a baby back to sleep, or for any other reason, here's how to enable Background Sounds on your iPhone. How to access Background Sounds from your Control Center Instead of searching through Settings each time you want to turn Background Sounds on, here's how you can set up a toggle in the Control Center to turn the feature on to use on your iPhone. 1. Open Control Center . 2. Tap the plus (+) sign in the top left of your screen. 3. Tap Add a Control near the bottom of your screen. 4. Tap Hearing control (ear icon) under Hearing Accessibility to add to Control Center. You can find the Hearing control under Hearing Accessibility in your Control Center. Apple/Screenshot by CNET Once the Hearing control icon is in Control Center, tap it to see three options: Speaker, Background Sounds and Live Listen. Then tap the musical notes next to Background Sounds to turn the feature on. You can also tap on the words Background Sounds to open a menu to choose a different background sound as well as adjust the volume. These are a few of the sounds you can access in Background Sounds. Apple/Screenshot by CNET Use Accessibility Shortcuts for Background Sounds You can also set up an accessibility shortcut to turn Background Sounds on or off from your home screen or within an app. Here's how to set it up. 1. Tap Settings . 2. Tap Accessibility . 3. Tap Accessibility Shortcut . 4. Tap Background Sounds . Now, when you press the side button on your iPhone three times, Background Sounds will turn on. You can tap the button three times again to turn it back off. Apple/Screenshot by CNET Discover These Hidden AirPods Features and Boost Your Listening Experience +9 More See all photos More Background Sound options If you want more control over Background Sounds, here's where to go. 1. Tap Settings . 2. Tap Accessibility . 3. Tap Audio & Visual